My life, I realize suddenly, is July. Childhood is June, and old age is August, but here it is, July, and my life, this year, is July inside of July.

To not pursue the thing one wants would be a waste of one's life.

A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.

Sometimes I perceive that there is a stillness and a wholeness in the world or in some portion or corner or fragment of the world or some little place in time where things just feel so right and huge and powerful and easy that I will have the perhaps blasphemous thought maybe there are layers of heaven.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

The future's so random, and so mobile, there's no way you're going to get to your vision of what you want your community to be just by chance alone. I really believe you have to let people know, to use your voice, to say, 'this is what I like about my place, I want to keep it this way, this is what I think can be improved, this is what I disapprove of.' That's the only way you can have a part in shaping the future.

The Ploughmen is part inspired fever-dream, part adventure story, a lyric parable of not just goodand evil but of the vast and beautiful and often lonely country in-between. Kim Zupan is a wonder.